In fact, before the Qing government decided to recall the Chinese students, Li Hongzhang ordered Mission to select 20 clever ones who hadn't entered university for internships at the big telegraph bureaus in America. They would contribute to the construction of the first telegraph line in China. When the Mission was closed Li Hongzhang telegraphed Wu Zideng, mandating an early return of those students. As early as 1871, when the Chinese students were about to go to the US, the Great Northern Telegraph Co. of Denmark laid an underwater cable between Hongkong and Shanghai. However, the cable was denied a landfall in Shanghai. An old boat had to be renovated as a floating telegraph station. The conservatives thought building cables as well as railways would disrupt Fengshui.

Both Liang Dunyan and Huang Kaijia were once at Yale. They started as telegraphers in Tianjin. However, Liang later became secretary to Zhang Zhidong, governor of Liang Guang, while Huang became secretary to Shen Xuanhua in the general office of the China Telegraph Service. So began their illustrious careers.

Among the 120 Chinese students in the U.S., over 20 experienced the initial hardship of building China's telegraph network. Some of them dedicated their lives to the cause of telegraphy and were remembered as the founders of China's telegraph industry.

In 1872, New England in the U.S. greeted a group of strange Chinese children. Ten years of life together found these boys as family members of the American households they lodged. In 1881, when the Chinese students were suddenly called back, these families parted with them as if with their own sons. Letters became the ties of connection between the two sides of the Pacific Ocean.

The Chinese students must have remembered the last baseball match. When they passed by San Francisco on their way back to China, they had a match with the local Oakland baseball team. A team consisting of young Chinese won in the US national sport. Now, five of the nine students in this Oriental baseball team were assigned to the Foochow Shipbuilding College to study navigation.

In 1881, sixteen of the boy students, including Zhan Tianyou, were assigned to Foochow Shipbuilding College to enter the 8th session. Five of them were from Yale, five from MIT, and two from Rensellaer Polytechnic institute.

The five Chinese students from MIT included Xue Youfu of the Class of 1884. Among the letters written by the Chinese students were two sent by Xue Youfu to an American classmate named Kathy. The first letter was mailed from San Francisco in the U.S.

As the Chinese students had been well trained in language and rudimentary courses, they graduated from the five-year program within one year. Five students, including Xue Youfu, were assigned as officers on probation on the Yangwu, the flagship of the Fujian Navy.

The Yangwu had been built at the Mawei Shipyard. After five or six years of debating over whether to develop marine defense, or whether to purchase foreign warships, China's navy began to evolve.

In 1881, as the ship carrying the boy students back to China was crossing the Pacific, two cruisers with flying dragon flags appeared on the Atlantic and passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. They were the Chaoyong and the Yangwei, purchased by the Qing government from Britain. The ships were commanded by Ding Ruchang, Commander-in-chief of the Beiyang Navy . Deng Shichang and Lin Zengtai navigated the vessels. At that time, this was the longest distance covered by Chinese captains. From the Mediterranean Ocean, through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, the two vessels steamed towards China.

Meanwhile China's two earliest ironclads were being manufactured in Germany.

Li Hongzhang named them the Dingyuan and the Zhengyuan. As the two ships were finished and ready to sail home, the Sino-French War broke out.